Greetings all, hope everyone's having a lovely summer. Another art update today to show off some of the new illustrations and talk about where we're at with the overall project. 

This was one of the hardest designs to get right so far, as you can see from the number of sketches. The problem here was I wanted a really specific look and feel, not just generic mech robot. There are uncountable mecha designs out there and I rarely like them. The Colossi's description states that it is in the image of a warrior saint, so I wanted to explore what that could mean. Various attempts at a mech in bronze age armour ensued. 

None of this was quite working until I turned to the Colossus of Nero, a demolished statue that once stood in front of Rome's coliseum. Making the Colossus lither and less bulky fit with my image of the construct as a sacred being as well as a war machine.

The final design is a combination of the Colossus of Nero and Robot Maria from Metropolis. I enjoy how eerie this ended up being, a lot less brutal and heavy than the original concepts but no less dangerous. 

Vaarn's Wind Barges are a direct homage to the Sky Ships from the Edge Chronicles, memorably illustrated by Chris Riddell. In this instance the task was not to design from scratch but rather explore the outlines of my homage to Chris's awesome designs. 

As you can see, the final design doesn't stray very far from the Chris Riddell vision. The Edge Chronicles were a huge series for me as a young lad and I really wanted to pay tribute in Vaarn 2E.

Another design that didn't require lots of exploratory work, as the vehicle is a tribute to another artist - in this case the great Moebius. The master included many variants of these spherical glass craft in his art over the decades, most notably in the Edena series. The Vaarn version is four seater to accommodate whole families, but aside from that small change this design is a tribute act.

The Vimana is a hyper-powerful crystalline throne, which once conveyed the Autarchs of Urth from place to place. This is a high level vehicle, and I went through a few different concepts. The look that won out was a peacock-tail inspired design, which I felt conveyed the majesty and vanity the Autarchs were capable of. 

I am please to report that Christian has finished the initial edit of the manuscript. I am currently engaged with reviewing his suggested changes, after which I will finalise the page layout and we will being indexing and bookmarking the text for ease of use. I anticipate this will take another month or so. 

When I have finished reviewing the suggested changes, I will release a new working draft for backers, likely at the end of this month or early September. This will probably be the final working draft before we lock in for printing. I will open a channel for typo hunting at this stage so look out for that soon.